Category Archives: NK vs SK

A friend sent a link to this image of the day with a discussion from NASA. I thought it was a stunning statement. NK will likely not be a big player in anthropogenic climate perturbations1.

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Computing stuff

In the most recent issue of Science mag (Jan 18th) that I received, I was alerted to a new fact:

the Japanese Fujitsu super computer “something or other” that I mentioned yesterday as the fastest, has been superseded in performance by the Oak RIdge National Laboratory’s Titan super computer at Oak Ridge, TN, USA! Oh, yeah, baby! Does 17.6 “petaflops” a second.

You can read about these developments here (or here: Exascale Science-2013-Service-264-6) as “exascale” computing is considered as the next major step in super computing, a step required for progress in several fields, including materials science.

Exascale supercomputers will run 57 times faster than the current best. Also, if such a computer that can do “exaflops”, was to be constructed using today’s technology, it would require FOUR HUNDRED FORTY-SIX MEGAWATTS of electricity to run it! That’s enough electricity to power half a million homes, this article pointed out!

But such a incredible super computer is needed for better weather and climate forecasting so I think we should go ahead and get one.

Cost?

Oh, maybe 100-200 million…IF they can make one.

But, “has the world has gone mad?”, you might ask.

Just think of how many hundreds and hundreds of these “ExecuTower” computers you could buy with that same 100-200 million, and all the computing they could do. They come with a 1-year warranty, too:

From Byte magazine, 1990.

Our clouds for awhile?

Cirrus, patchy enough for nice sunrises and sunsets.

Not mentioning model outputs….why dwell on dryness and negativity? Life is too short.